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Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

ucsf.edu

221–230 of 537 posts

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am only surprised this came out of UCSF and Robert Lustig's name is not on it, since it's often a topic in his books. Maybe nutrition-health connection is more complex than can be shown by these early studies, and the big lobbying money only needs one study to get congressional support some putative scientific backing, the entire anti science funding arm of Congress uses one factoid about a shrimp treadmill for dec…

>the entire antivax movement is built on that widely discredited Wakefield paper. You're clearly misinformed. The antivax movement is largely a grassroots movement built on the experiences of the parents of vaccine-injured children, and people who've read the literature comparing vaccinated vs unvaccinated outcomes. E.g. the large scale unpublished study conducted by the CDC, https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/u…

Sigh.

The paper couldn't make it through peer review because of methodology errors.

Specifically, the sample groups had vastly different demographics and sizes which make meaningful comparisons between them impossible due to confounding factors.

This wasn't some secret CDC plot to bury research. The CDC wasn't even involved. This was just poor research.

https://www.henryford.com/news/2025/09/vaccine-study-henry-f...

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#222

Which will make you fatter? A) Eating a pound/kg of fat B) Eating a pound/kg of refined sugar Correct answer: B Sugar enters your blood stream almost immediately --- starting in your mouth. Unless you're doing heavy exercise and burning lots of calories, your body has to store most of this excess energy --- as fat. The only way to get consumed fat into your bloodstream is to first convert it into sugar --- which itse…

Note that a kg of fat contains about 9000 calories, while a kg of sugar contains about 4000 calories, so this is really a startling claim, if true

It's not given the ratios

OP should have said for calorie-adjusted intake sugar is more fattening.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#223
post #12

When this news first came out it was mind blowing, but at the same time I don't entirely get it. So the money quote seems to be: > The literature review heavily criticized studies linking sucrose to heart disease, while ignoring limitations of studies investigating dietary fats. They paid a total of 2 people $50,000 (edit: in 2016 dollars). That doesn't seem like enough to entirely shape worldwide discourse around nu…

You’re exactly right: This one incident did not shape the entire body of scientific research. There is a common trick used in contrarian argumentation where a single flaw is used to “debunk” an entire side of the debate. The next step, often implied rather than explicit, is to push the reader into assuming that the opposite position must therefore be the correct one. They don’t want you to apply the same level of rig…

But there is also the fallacy where some people want you to believe basically everything will cause CVD and there is no single thing you could do to change it, so therefore just keep doing whatever you’re doing.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#224

Which will make you fatter? A) Eating a pound/kg of fat B) Eating a pound/kg of refined sugar Correct answer: B Sugar enters your blood stream almost immediately --- starting in your mouth. Unless you're doing heavy exercise and burning lots of calories, your body has to store most of this excess energy --- as fat. The only way to get consumed fat into your bloodstream is to first convert it into sugar --- which itse…

> The only way to get consumed fat into your bloodstream is to first convert it into sugar --- which itself burns some energy. Fat does not get converted into glucose in normal conditions in appreciable quantities. It's used as-is, most of the body can directly utilize fatty acids as a fuel source. Also, body has a lot of mechanisms to deal with sugar. It is normally stored in the liver and then released slowly.

But it will always prefer glucose stores over fat.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the top of the pyramid there are also vegetables. For some reason that is left out in some of the media converge. Kennedy said to avoid the sugary, processed foods that he labels as poisonous to health. (Does any sane person disagree with this?) “My message is clear: Eat real food,” Mr. Kennedy said (Does any sane person disagree with this?)

[flagged]

> He's an absolute goddamn nutjob

> He is a vaccine-denier

> Anything he says has no validity

Huh?

Yeah, he's wrong about many things. But hurling epithets and constructing an argument via ad hominem isn't necessary. You can defeat his claims directly.

And FWIW, the claim that eating unprocessed "whole" foods is healthy is almost certainly true.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#226

A good book that explains it all is The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes, which came out the same year as this article. Like many truths, it's actually well-known and frequently discussed in public, but hard to hear amongst all the noise of corporate messaging and decades of bad dietary 'advice' from both public and private institutions. To paraphrase the Oracle in the Matrix: What's really going to bake your noodle…

Yep. And thanks for the recommendation. I am currently reading The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz.

That's a good one. Taubes also has a (more well known book) called Why We Get Fat.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#228
post #62

My understanding was that atherosclerotic plaques are comprised of cholesterol or fatty deposits [1] and that these can lead to CVD. The fat mechanism I understand, but what is the mechanism for sugar in CVD? [1] https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/cholesterol/about-cho...

CVD requires a bunch of events to happen in sequence, I always felt like it was a combination of risk factors + luck that make a heart attack or aneurysm happen. 1. High blood pressure damages walls of arteries and veins 2. LDL Cholesterol gets into the damaged walls 3. LDL gets oxidized 4. White blood cells engulf oxidized LDL and form plaques 5. Hardened plaques chill, they are bad but not deadly, if a plaque break…

And the liver produces triglycerides from fructose which is half of sugar.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do the opposite of whatever Kennedy recommends, you probably wouldn’t be too far off doing the right thing.

Eating nothing but processed foods, sugar, and heavily processed grains? That sounds like the opposite of what Kennedy recommends, which is a recipe for obesity and type 2 diabetes. He’s got his problems, many of them, but eating real food without a bunch of processing seems like a fairly common sense thing.

[deleted]

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the top of the pyramid there are also vegetables. For some reason that is left out in some of the media converge. Kennedy said to avoid the sugary, processed foods that he labels as poisonous to health. (Does any sane person disagree with this?) “My message is clear: Eat real food,” Mr. Kennedy said (Does any sane person disagree with this?)

[flagged]

> This is the sort of misdirection that requires the follow up question "what is real food?". For RFK that includes a roadkill bear.

What is wrong with roadkill bear? Genuinely asking.

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